Hot dog! A Lower East Side art exhibit explores the Jewish roots of an all-American food | JTA

(New York Jewish Week) — Award-successful Jewish artist Steve Marcus, 50, has created a occupation building artwork for publications like Rolling Stone, the New York Occasions and Esquire, as nicely as for purchasers like MTV and Random Home. 

And now, in an exhibition of new operate that opens Thursday, Could 12 at the Museum at Eldridge Road, Marcus has turned his consideration to a thing fairly a bit more workaday and humble: the scorching puppy.

“Steve Marcus: Top Puppy of Kosher Pop Art” is a collection of cartoon-like, hand-drawn illustrations about hot dogs that operate the gamut from background to fantasy. 

“Little Nathan’s Dream” depicts Nathan Handwerker — the Jewish immigrant who started out Nathan’s Well-known — fantasizing about a vibrant, crowded storefront on Coney Island’s Boardwalk. 

One more illustration, “Rabbi Frank and the Frank Tank” displays a kosher version of Oscar Mayer’s Wienermobile parked outside the house the Decreased East Aspect stalwart Katz’s Deli. 

“Steve’s drawings are crammed complete of depth, wry observations and nuggets of historical past,” curator Nancy Johnson reported in a statement. “His do the job tells a tale with deep roots in Jewish existence and immigrant tradition — it’s the American dream on a bun!”

While he’s experienced temporary stints in Northern California and Brooklyn, Marcus has lived and labored on the Lower East Facet for more than 25 a long time. He has drawn inspiration from the diverse urban landscape as very well as the deep Jewish roots of the community and the time he expended researching Torah locally at Mesivta Tifereth Jerusalem, a person of the oldest yeshivas in the town. 

In excess of the many years, Marcus has also produced a bunch of illustrations and posters for the hashish legalization movement — you may perhaps be common with his work if you have checked out or study about YIVO’s groundbreaking new exhibit, Am Yisrael Substantial: The Story of Jews and Hashish. Marcus developed the poster for the show, and he also has seven parts in the exhibition, all produced in the 1990s and early 2000s, that he reported will be incorporated in YIVO’s archives. 

“It was an outlaw scene filled with a memorable forged of figures, but now it is mainstream,” Marcus informed the New York Jewish Week, reflecting on the movement to legalize weed. “It’s incredible that my work from the Hashish Reform Motion is now integrated in the American History collection at the Harvard Library, and is also in the lasting selection at the Oakland Museum of California, since when I made this physique of artwork I did not imagine it would develop into component of historical past and adjust The united states.”

When asked if he at any time assumed his affinities for cannabis society and Jewish tradition would align this way, Marcus quoted a famous Grateful Lifeless lyric: “What a extended, bizarre vacation it is been.”

On the eve of the opening of his incredibly hot puppy clearly show, Marcus responded to the New York Jewish Week’s “Four Questions,” sharing with us his takes on America’s adore for hot pet dogs how Jewish heritage informs his contemporary art, and how his 6-year-aged nephew influenced this exhibition.

This job interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

1. New York Jewish Week: Initially things initially: What inspired you to do a series of is effective about kosher warm canine? 

Steve Marcus: This unique collection of operates was motivated by my 6-calendar year-aged nephew, Nate “Nati” Gottlieb, who in the summer of 2021 came to visit me at my off-the-grid cabin on 30 acres in the middle of nowhere to rejoice my birthday weekend with a tenting excursion. He drew me a birthday card that pictured us roasting sizzling canine on a stick more than a campfire and, on looking at his drawing, I promptly created a hearth and put sizzling puppies on sticks. He proceeded to roast a sizzling pet on a stick over the open up flame for the initially time — and, as he was performing this, he seemed about to me though sitting down on a rock and claimed, “Uncle Steve, this is a person of my desires coming true.” It was then and there that I determined to make a collection of artwork based on warm canines, that folks of all ages could relish. 

2. You have lived and worked in the Lower East Facet for some 25 many years. Convey to me about the relationship among your very hot doggy job and the museum, which is housed in the 19th-century Eldridge Street Synagogue — ended up you impressed by the location, and what connections do you make in between the synagogue, the neighborhood and this exhibit?

As I walk from my condominium to the Museum at Eldridge Road, I stroll past addresses that are landmarks in hot pet dog record. My everyday early morning routine brings me previous the unique website of the Hebrew Countrywide kosher sausage manufacturing unit, founded at 155 East Broadway in 1905, and when I return property, I pass 37 Essex Avenue, the handle of Isaac Gellis Provisions. Isaac Gellis was the “kosher sausage king of America” and recognized as the richest person on the Decrease East Side, and who was also a congregant at the Eldridge Road Synagogue. The Decrease East Side is so rich with historical past and trivia, each and every nook and cranny has a story to tell. I enjoy to create artwork that is exciting and humorous still linked to record and my roots and society.

3. Freud famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Is a sizzling puppy ever just a hot pet? What does the imagery indicate to you as a Jew, a New Yorker and an artist?”

Now, in America, above 7 billion scorching pet dogs, or 818 warm puppies for each 2nd, are consumed throughout peak grilling period, from Memorial Working day to Labor Working day, in accordance to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council — which definitely proves that people today like scorching canines. I really like factors that provide us with each other somewhat than divide us, so regardless of whether your preference is a kosher, all-beef, pork or meatless hot pet dog, I glimpse ahead to the day that we can regard and realize the prevalent hyperlinks that connect us all, and eventually and consume the scorching puppy of your preference alongside one another in peace.

4. You’ve been recognized as a culturally influential resident in the anthology “Jews, The People’s Historical past of the Lower East Aspect.” How does your Jewish identification encourage your operate?

My art is closely affected by cartoons and underground comics and I have managed that type through my profession. I phone my new operate “Kosher People Art,” “Pop Judaica” or “Contemporary Ethnic Art” due to the fact it is an expression of my conventional lifestyle and rooted in the traditions that occur from my group and its heritage whilst continue to preserving my up to date aesthetics and design and style. It expresses and shares my cultural and spiritual identity by conveying its shared communal values with the viewer while linking my quirky sense of humor with my passion for my individual roots and lifestyle. Like it or not, no 1 can accuse me of cultural appropriation.

Bonus concern:  What is your preferred put in NYC to get a scorching pet? 

My favorite position to try to eat is household mainly because, for me, nothing at all can contend with home cooking.

“Steve Marcus: Major Dog of Kosher Pop Art” will be on see at the Museum at Eldridge Road, 12 Eldridge Road, by Nov. 6, 2022. 

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